Despite being a driving force for so many of the modernist innovations in New York in the 1950s, Frank O'Hara has nevertheless remained a relatively obscure writer for many British readers. This very well-conceived and well-structured volume seeks to rectify this omission. The Introduction positions the volume very clearly in terms of its contribution to scholarship on O'Hara's poetry, as well as providing an excellent analysis of the history of the reception of O'Hara's work. Arguing that the distinctive contribution of this book from among its competitors lies in its treatment of the variety of O'Hara's personae and poses, Hampson and Montgomery aim to focus on the complexity of O'Hara's work rather than “calcifying around the urbane and charming persona” (3). In this respect, the perception of the editors that O'Hara's work requires a good deal more thorough investigation and that, in so doing, one can learn new things about the interrelationship of the various arts in the New York modernist environment of the 1950s and 1960s is highly persuasive. Written in a readable yet succinct style, the Introduction also offers a good juxtaposition of the UK contributions to knowledge of O'Hara alongside the transatlantic scholarship.

The book is intelligently structured into three thematic sections – “City,” “Selves,” and “The Work of Others.” These three sections allow the editors to ensure that essays that cover a wide range of ideas, events and relationships are coherently organized and intellectually apposite. O'Hara is probably best known as the witty metropolitan poet and the first section – “City” – covers this aspect of his work, albeit without falling into clichés or well-trodden areas of O'Hara's work. Geoff Ward's essay is a stylishly written and keen meditation on what it is to be a “city-poet,” defining the urban environment, especially New York. Allusive, referential and tightly argued, Ward opens up a set of issues that are then recurrently addressed in the subsequent essays that initiate a whole set of innovative ideas: Lytle Shaw's investigation into O'Hara's relationship with abstract expressionists opens up new comparisons with the situationists, Andrea Brady offers an unusual and interesting comparison between O'Hara's poetic practice and Charles Bernstein's “anti-absorptive” poetics, David Herd's incisive essay presents an excellent reading of the cognitive issues in O'Hara's poetry that also addresses itself to larger issues in poetry itself, while Rod Mengham and Tadeusz Pióro offer good explorations of the international dimensions of O'Hara's work. In addition, all these essays also consider the role of the poet–artist in useful cross-linked ways that give the section and the collection more generally a tightness of conception.

The section entitled “Selves” addresses the romanticism of O'Hara's poetry and manifesto statements, tackling in particular the different notions of self – subjectivity, selfhood, self-identity, body and physicality. O'Hara's treatment of emotions also features in this section, and the essays by John Wilkinson, Keston Sutherland, Josh Robinson and Richard Deming are very astute readings of aspects of selfhood. However, in many ways, it is the third section, entitled “The Work of Others,” that is the most innovative. Although it continues many of the aforementioned issues, it extends our understanding of the context of O'Hara's work by positioning it within aesthetic modernism in all of its forms – cinema, art, poetry, technology, music and dance. Essays by Daniel Kane, Redell Olsen, Will Montgomery, Brian Reed and Nick Selby present us with significant new insights into O'Hara's working practices as well as extending our understanding of the aesthetic milieu of New York during O'Hara's heyday.

This collection gathers together many of the leading British scholars on O'Hara and, consequently, one is getting cutting-edge ideas and scholarship. The essays are theoretically and methodologically informed, and the book offers work at two levels. In the main, the book is focussed on opening up issues related to O'Hara's work and practice. However, the essays also address many of the pressing concerns of reading, writing and interpreting the wider sphere of avant-garde poetic exploration as well. Consequently, the collection is not a narrowly focussed book and it appeals to a range of potential different readerships in different disciplines. All in all, the volume seems a model of editors' reenergizing debate on a writer who is highly pertinent to the contemporary understanding of avant-garde writing; and it is to the credit of Liverpool University Press that it perceives a need to support such debates in academic publishing.